Palgrave's Book This study on (The Jurists' Contribution to the Formation of Islamic Jurisprudence from the Prophetic Era to the Middle of the Fourth/Twelfth Century) presents and discusses a variety of Islamic themes and topics related to the evolution of Islamic jurisprudence. A detailed research on numerous legal schools and ideas is presented. The literature review is extensive; the methodology was painstakingly thorough and incorporated the use of a sufficient number of arguments, perspectives and legal debates. The content of the work is original and carries within it substantial contributions. The quality of the research is rigorous in offering extensive evidences and arguments for each of its ideas and titles. It offers a genuine contribution to the field of history and Islamic law as well as its different evolving stages. The advantage of the work is that it sheds lights on the original building blocks of much of today's legal discourse. The research certainly progresses the current scholarship by systematically discussing each idea in detail as well as the stages of legal history while informing the reader of the historical rationales underlying much of the legal debates that drive Muslim societies today. The author, a student of Professor Wael Hallaq at McGill University (Canada) was clearly influenced by the former's style of analysis, argumentation and writing. The author supports his discussion with references from primary Arabic sources that many today are reluctant to consult due to their time-consuming and even burdensome nature. The author took on the challenge of consulting and drawing on those early Islamic works, translating their contents into English and rendering them accessible to the reader. I am not aware of this work being an addition to any other series. This work remains original and innovative and should be made available and accessible to the reader. Undoubtedly, the research appeal targets a large audience with its fusion of religion, history and law. It is of great interest and appeal to those interested to further explore the evolutionary history of Islamic law and legal culture as well as those interested in developing a general overview of the Islamic sources and the nature and processes involved with the formation of its legal doctrines. Understanding the complexities and dynamics of much of the legal contemporary debates in Muslim societies would be trying without delving into those building blocks of the law as exposed in this work. Undoubtedly this work is an invaluable piece of research on the origins and development stages of Islamic law and Islamic doctrine overall. The authors ability to engage the author in a number of historical facts and perspectives that crystalize the formation of current codification of the Islamic law has also made this research highly intriguing. This is significant in view of the fact that all audiences, whether reading the book out of unspecialized interest or with a background in Islamic history and law, one would find the work quite rich with extensive information hardly found in many other contemporary works on Islamic law and legal doctrines in Islam. The breadth of the research wide-ranging and cover various regions and zone, and historical stations. The contribution of the author is undeniably impressive. However, the author would have to take another round of review of the style and presentation. A major problem is the extensive use of Arabic terms which may cause comprehension difficulty to the English reader. The author' use of Arabic terms however, is understandable as he perhaps wanted to provide the Arabic sense in a work such as this. This hurdle is comparably easy to overlook given the available English translation sources that would render the text smooth and enjoyable. An additional issue is the improper transliteration and misspelling of proper nouns, names of legal sources and terms in Arabic. Another round of professional language editing is necessary. Many sentences and even paragraphs are either poorly written or entirely incomprehensible while yet others are incomplete. While this is a very useful piece of study on the historical development of Islamic law, comprising of an extensive array of historical details, the manuscript needs to be more reader friendly. I suggest splitting the work into further sections/sub-sections. There is ample space in the manuscript for further organisation/division. I highly recommend the manuscript for publication after the adjustments have been taken into account. In its current form the manuscript is requires further editing and a minor review.
